Vicky Doan-Nguyen

About

Dr. Vicky Doan-Nguyen joined the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in 2017 as an assistant professor specializing in energy storage and conversion. She develops in-situ and in-operando capabilities to study the dynamics of energy storage materials in the transmission electron microscope.

“Global solutions for electrical energy storage and energy conversion issues rely on nanomaterials designed to be durable electrodes and catalysts,” Doan-Nguyen said. Issues of electrode stability, chemical reversibility, and catalyst positioning remain a challenge. Design solutions stem from studying dynamic surface and interfacial chemistry and structure in these materials using in-situ local structural probes.

Functional properties of these materials are often not well understood from a structural perspective. Harnessing a suite of emerging structural characterization techniques allow Doan-Nguyen and her group to visualize and track previously inaccessible dynamics that govern surface-mediated reduction-oxidation chemistry in both electrochemical energy storage and heterogeneous catalysis.

“Combining advanced techniques such as element–specific in-situ electron microscopy, synchrotron-based X-ray scattering and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAFS), and solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (ssNMR) will enable us to design next generation materials for electrochemical energy storage and heterogeneous catalysis,” she said. In-situ electron microscopy allows us have greater insight into the structural evolution of interfaces in batteries. This is particularly useful for designing next generation all-solid cells, which will result in safer batteries.

Doan-Nguyen was a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow and an Ellings Prize Fellow in the Ram Seshadri Group at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She was also in the Bruce S. Dunn Group at the University of California, Los Angeles.

She earned her B.S. in chemistry and women’s and gender studies from Yale University, followed by a M.S. and Ph.D. in materials science and engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Physical Society, the Materials Research Society, the American Crystallographic Association, and the Electrochemical Society.